Gavin Willis Stutts of Mountain Home, charged with breaking into a store and shooting into a house on two occasions, appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Thursday and entered a not guilty plea to the charges against him.He was ordered to reappear in circuit court August 9th.The 27-year-old Stutts was first arrested July 20th and charged with breaking into a grocery store along State Highway 101 North in the Gamaliel area.
The owner of the business who lives next door to the establishment heard her dogs barking in the early morning hours. She was reported to have seen a man walking about the store and called 911.
The man fled before deputies arrived. Video footage from the store’s surveillance system showed the suspect make entry by throwing a rock through the front door. Those at the scene were able to determine the type car the suspect was driving.
The suspect took beer and cigarettes from the store.
From the video footage, Stutts was identified as the person who broke into the store. Police were alerted to be on the lookout for the vehicle driven by the suspect involved in the store break-in. It was located in the parking lot of a Mountain Home business.
Stutts came to the vehicle and gave officers permissions to search. They found .9mm casings and unspent ammunition matching the spent casings.
Stutts took officers to the address along Lucerne Street and gave them two pistols. He said he had gone to his parent’s farm and practiced shooting with the guns but denied any recollection of shooting at a residence. He said he did not know occupants at the Bryant Street Residence and had no reason to want to harm them. He said he thought he had been intoxicated and had passed out in the store parking lot.
The investigation did point to Stutts as the person later arrested for firing shots into the residents along Bryant Street in early May. In the shooting incident, five rounds struck the residence penetrating the front door, living room windows and interior walls.
The residents of the Bryant Street residence were away from home at the time of the first incident.
A second incident of shots being fire at the house from a vehicle was reported the next month. Officers found two new bullet holes — one through the wall and one through a bedroom window.
At that point, a resident of the house told officers he had a previous relationship with Stutt’s wife a few year prior to the recent incidents. He said Stutts and his wife were separated at the time, and he had had no contact with the woman since.
Officers located Stutts at his home, reporting him to be intoxicated. Eventually, Stutts was arrested for both the store break-in and firing shots at into the Bryant Street residence.
According to electronic jail logs maintained by the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office, Stutts is being charged with commercial burglary, theft of property, two charges of terroristic acts and aggravated assault.
His bond shown on the jail log is $250,000.
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